Skip to main content

History in Verse


Book Review

Very few people can make history interesting to read. Most of our history books are written in such dull and prosaic style that only academicians can endure them. As a school student, I detested my history books. After school, I never touched history books until I came across writers like William Dalrymple. Recently I read Wendy Doniger’s Alternative History of Hinduism and fell in love with her – her style, I mean.

Sonia Dogra has chosen to present history in verse in her new book, Unlocked. She has clubbed poems on historical personalities together under the heading, ‘The Famous and the Infamous’, and the latter half of the book is titled ‘Epoch-Making Episodes’. People and events make up history. What makes Sonia’s book interesting is the fact that she has chosen some unusual aspect of history as the subject of each of these poems.

The very first poem, for example, is about Hitler. We meet the 6-year-old Hitler, however. The abuses from his father had made the little boy a psychological wreck. The poet asks:
If the parents of an infamous Adolf Hitler
hadn’t grievously faltered,
Do you think the course of history
could have been altered?
The poem on Mahatma Gandhi looks at certain less-known dimensions of the great soul’s life in South Africa. Titled ‘Sergeant Major Gandhi’, the poem shows us Gandhi leading the Natal Indian Congress and also raising the Natal Indian Ambulance Corps. The poet hints not so subtly about the shrewdness that guided some of Gandhi’s actions.

Cleopatra’s exquisite nose is the subject of another poem. A nose that could cast a magic spell “On the great men of Rome / who for the queen fell” deserves the attention of poets more than historians, and Sonia has done justice to it.

The second half of the book is about some events in history that catch our attention. The poet has made the collection very relevant by adding a poem “dedicated to the history of quarantine”. The Italian words ‘quaranta giorni’ mean forty days, she informs us. The ships that arrived at harbours in Venice were not allowed to land before forty days as a security measure.

Hundred years ago, the Spanish Flu created a quarantine situation similar to what’s happening now with closure of all public gatherings, schools, entertainment houses and games. “You needed a certificate to be on the lanes,” says the poem. “Face masks had suddenly made a quick foray / Fear and mistrust, speculation and gossip…” fill us with a strange sense of déjà vu.

Some episodes like the one presented in the poem ‘Unit 731’ are blood-curdling. Man’s inhumanity to man has always left trails of blood in history making us wonder again and again whether we are indeed a noble race of creatures.

Sonia Dogra opens certain doors wide so that we can clearly see some of our historical deeds and misdeeds. We can be proud of ourselves sometimes. We may need to hang our heads in shame occasionally. This book’s greatest service, perhaps, is the interest it rouses in history. We will be left at the end with a longing for more. Making us want more history is not a mean achievement.
 
Sonia Dogra
PS. The book can be downloaded here: Unlocked

My book in the series is: Great Books for Great Thoughts

Comments

  1. Sir I am grateful that you took out time to read and review Unlocked. To hear an academician of your stature talk about it is a privilege. Much gratitude.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Best wishes. Look forward to more works from you.

      Delete
  2. A very good review, gives an insight about the wonderful book

    ReplyDelete
  3. I came across Sonia Dogra during A to Z challenge and her verses on untold stories of Historical men and women made me fall in love with the subject of History for the first time in life! Each verse, each anecdote is a masterpiece and I wish Sonia congrautlations and all the best for future journey!
    Your review of her work is so very concise and apt, Tomichan ji.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks Anagha. The best thing I love about Sonia Dogra is her compassionate attitude to history. Only people good at heart can posses such compassion.

      Delete
  4. Your review touches the point the mist neglected in our country...history....as you wrote, the poems had enough strength to ariuse interest in reading history and learning it....will read her...I am only humbly to mention that there have quite a pretty flow of nicer ways of presenting history...some took analytical mode, some literary...all over the world...yes, includimg our country...yes, those are not so promoted here so mostly reside in oblivion...these books undoubtedly are valued only in alimited circle of academicians and people who love to know hishory...nice that more young people are joining them..thanks again for introducing the writer and her amazing contribution in your own interesting fair of writing...best regards

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. History cannot arouse much interest anyway except among those who want to misuse it. I'm happy that writers like Sonia Dogra bring it to the public in an interesting way.

      Delete
  5. Sounds so interesting! Sure to check it out. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do. You are such a fantastic personality that it will always be good to have your opinion.

      Delete
  6. Looks like a very interesting book from your review!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Two Nuns and two questions

The nuns kept in custody  Two Catholic nuns were arrested on 25 July 2025 at Durg railway station for allegedly trafficking tribal women from Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh to Agra in UP. Today’s newspapers in Kerala have expressed their contempt of the act more vehemently than I had expected. It seems secularism has hope yet in this country. For those who are not aware of the incident, two nuns were arrested because some criminals of a depraved organisation called Bajrang Dal in Chhattisgarh chose to conclude that the nuns were committing the crime of human-trafficking. Since that charge wouldn’t stick, because the women confessed that they were going voluntarily to take up jobs with the help of the nuns in order to raise their families from miserable poverty in a country that claims to be a $5-tillion-economy, another charge was fabricated that the nuns had indulged in religious conversion. Now let us look at certain facts. Though I keep questioning the Christian churches for...

Capital Punishment is not Revenge

Govindachamy when Kerala High Court confirmed his death sentence The Bible suggests that it is better for one man to die if that death helps others to live better [ John 11: 50 ]. Forgive me for applying that to a criminal today, though Jesus made that statement in a benign theological context. A notorious and hardcore criminal has escaped prison in Kerala. Fourteen years ago he assaulted a young girl who was travelling all alone in a late evening train, going back home from her workplace. The girl jumped out of the running train to save herself from this beast. But he jumped after her and raped her. The postmortem report suggested that he raped her twice, the second being when she had already fallen unconscious. And then he killed her hitting her head with a stone. Do you think that creature is human? I wrote about this back then: A Drop of Tear For You, Soumya . The people of Kerala demanded capital punishment for this creature, the brute called Govindachamy. He is inhu...

Missing Women of Dharmasthala

The entrance to the temple Dharmasthala:  The Shadows Behind the Sanctum Ananya Bhatt, a young medical student from Manipal, visited the Dharmasthala Temple and she never returned to her hostel. She vanished without a trace. That was in 2003. Her mother, Sujata Bhatt, a stenographer working with the CBI, rushed to the temple town in search of her daughter. Some residents told her that they had seen Ananya walking with the temple officials. The local police refused to help in any way. Soon Sujata was abducted by three men, assaulted, and rendered unconscious. She woke up months later in a hospital in Bangalore (Bengaluru). Now more than two decades later, she is back in the temple premises to find her daughter’s remains and perform her last rites. Because a former sanitation worker of the temple came to the local court a few days back with a human skeleton and the confession that he had buried countless schoolgirls in uniform and other young women in the temple premises. This ma...

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Book Review Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity Author: Manu S Pillai Publisher: Penguin Random House India, 2024 Pages: 564 (about half of which consists of Notes) There never was any monolithic religion called Hinduism. Different parts of India practised Hinduism in its own ways, with its own gods and rituals and festivals. Some of these were even mutually opposed. For example, Vamana who is a revered incarnation of Vishnu in North India becomes a villain in Kerala’s Onam legends. What has become of this protean religion of infinite variety and diversity today in the hands of its ‘missionary’ political leaders? Manu S Pillai’s book ends with V D Savarkar’s contributions to the religion with a subtle hint that it is his legacy that is driving the present version of the religion in the name of Hindutva. The last lines of the book, leaving aside the Epilogue titled ‘What is Hinduism?’, are telltale. “Life did not give Savarkar all he...